Your merch sucks: conference edition. Two companies with booths side-by-side at @Forbes America Innovates event in San Fransisco: @Qualcomm and @threatstop One has a $42 billion in revenue, fancy products, and 52,000 employees. The other is privately held, very unsexy product, and a small team (I had never heard of them), but had a great booth and very memorable merch, with a twist. Qualcomm had the classic, vanilla booth: VR gadgets on display, some you can even pick up and interact with. Oh, and please take a swag bag while you are here. C- experience, generic merch, completely forgettable. The booth next to it was Threat Stop: see if you can pass this "test" of your cybersecurity skills. This was based on identifying URLs that were unsafe. An experience anyone could engage with it, regardless of their technical knowledge. They told me no one had passed the test when I walked up to their booth. So of course, I had to try it. And completed the assessment, but what about the merch? This is an B+ booth and A+ merch: you earn a challenge coin! These have a long history in military, law enforcement, and other subcultures. Besides being unique and easy to take home from the conference (unlike your 4th cliche swag bag), it also connects to the gamified booth experience and makes you feel special. They have to be earned, and not everyone gets one. Plus, you walk away with a story. Which is exactly what good merch turns in to. Which is why their merch doesn't suck. But yours probably does!